But I don’t need the stock market to tell me the American economy is sick. And you shouldn’t either. More than 9 percent of Americans looking for work can’t find it, according to official statistics, not including those who have stopped looking for work altogether. Almost 4.5 million have been out of work for more than a year, according to a new congressional report, with another 1.7 million out of work for between six months and a year.

As many of us have written before -- Matt Yglesias has been consistently sharp on this point -- this is a crisis. A real crisis. And a crisis partly, although not entirely, of our own making. We can’t rewrite history to prevent the housing bubble, and we can’t reach across the oceans to fix the financial troubles of Europe. But in the present day and in this country, we can put more spending money in the pockets of people who will spend it, by extending unemployment insurance and renewing a payroll tax holiday. We can put construction workers back on the job, by financing projects to fix up America’s roads, public schools, and other common assets. We can provide assistance to the states, so that they’ll stop adding people to the unemployment lines.